Gaming - Page 716

Sony has a bold and ambitious plan to make PlayStation a part of every bit of entertainment it creates.

When looking over Sony's recent investor's meeting presentation, one key thought stood out: PlayStation is king. Sony is synergizing all of its strongest points to make a huge content foundation for long-term growth. It's entertainment branches are working together in a new way to not only compliment, but meld with its billion-dollar gaming division. PlayStation will permeate through everything Sony does insofar as entertainment.

Soon we'll see some of PlayStation's biggest properties adapted into films and TV shows, all produced by Sony's new in-house PlayStation Productions studio. Its movie-making segment Sony Pictures will help bring PlayStation games to the big screen. The company's new focus on unity, which calls for a "one Sony collaboration," will see all of its moving parts working together to enhance PlayStation gaming and retroactively feed back into itself. Even Sony Music will create soundtracks for big first-party games moving forward.

Sony's PlayStation business has been centered around the PS4 for a while now. Now the company is breaking its console tether with cloud streaming tech.

Sony has ambitious plans for the PlayStation brand's future. The company outlined a new business strategy at its recent investors event that fully embraces its strengths as a company as well as new technologies like game streaming. Sony plans to bring its PlayStation Now service off-console to other platforms like mobiles, using 5G and Microsoft's own Azure servers to make it happen. The games-maker is eager not to be left behind as big companies like Microsoft and Google enter seamless cloud streaming.

The presentation talks a lot about Sony's ideals for its future. The two main tenants for PlayStation moving forward are "seamless" and "immersion." Immersion refers to the raw might of the PS5's new Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU hardware, but the seamless aspect is geared more towards services--game streaming in particular. Sony is creating a cohesive network of cross-platform services to help supplement its earnings and bring PlayStation to more users everywhere, regardless if they own a console or not.

From Software's weird and bizarre visual flair will mix with the flowing prose of one of the best fantasy writers in the business, reports indicate.

Famed A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin is helping From Software create a new open-world RPG with Norse mythology themes, sources tell Games Radar and Gematsu. The game will be centered in Norse mythology, giving From Software lots of source material to adapt with its otherworldly style, and will likely draw from George R. R. Martin's expansive knowledge of knights, myths and legends.

Key sources say Hideki Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin are working closely on the ambitious game. The game is codenamed GR--an abbreviation for Great Rune--and the game will be announce during Microsoft's E3 2019 next month. Whether or not the RPG is a Microsoft exclusive remains to be seen. The project is supposedly massive in scope and will be more expansive, complete with big tribal conflicts and longer-winded exploration. Horse-riding is reportedly involved and conquest may play a pivotal role; players may launch huge army-scale attacks on kingdoms to usurp thrones.

It looks like Sony has officially teased the loading time of its next-gen PlayStation 5 console against the current-gen PlayStation 4 Pro, with Takashi Mochizuki from The Wall Street Journal posting a video titled 'Sony's official video comparing performance of PS4 Pro vs next-gen PlayStation'.

Mochizuki's video shows Spider-Man loading time and performance between the PS4 Pro and next-gen PS5, something that PlayStation architect Mark Cerny talked about when the first details of the next-gen PS5 were revealed. We can see in the video that the PS4 Pro loads it all in 8.1 seconds compared to just 0.8 seconds on the next-gen PS5.

Cerny explained the ultra-fast SSD tech inside of the PS5: "An ultra-high-speed SSD is the key to our next generation. Our vision is to make loading screens a thing of the past, enabling creators to build new and unique gameplay experiences. The raw read speed is important, but so are the details of the I/O [input-output] mechanisms and the software stack that we put on top of them. I got a PlayStation 4 Pro and then I put in a SSD that cost as much as the PlayStation 4 Pro-it might be one-third faster".

Taking a step back into the early days of World of Warcraft means surrendering many quality of life features, so Blizzard have provided a whole list of what is "not a bug" and is just old school WoW.

Last week I reported on Blizzard bringing out 'World of Warcraft Classic' for WoW players who want to taste a bit of nostalgia goodness. WoW Classic arrives on August 27th and is completely free of charge for WoW subscribers, the contents include players having the opportunity of jumping back into some of the most iconic stages in World of Warcraft history. Playing WoW Classic will take players to patch 1.12 which will mean much of what WoW consists of today will change.

Jumping back into 2006 certainly takes its toll bug wise, but it also takes its toll mechanic wise. While some players would see that feeling the agedness of the game is apart of the fun, some players happened to miss the memo. Blizzard have issued out a complete list of what is a bug and what isn't, the lists can be found here and here.

The Super Smash Bros. UItimate director, Masahiro Sakurai has detailed what he believes to be a three phase development plan that was implemented into the development of Smash Bros Ultimate.

Sakurai has returned to his usual collumn in Famistu and talked about the reception of the recently added DLC character, Joker. Sakurai says that he is "glad the response to the release of Persona 5's Joker as a character has been so positive" and that sharing has become real with the addition of video editing capabilities and user-created content.

The real question that Sakurai asked himself throughout the development of Ultimate was "What do we need to do to make things more fun?", the answer to this question was fell into three development phases "Competition, Sharing and Cooperation". Sakurai regrets to say that "cooperation', unfortunately ended up being shelved part-way through" due to a technology cap being reached.

Bandai and Supermassive Games' sci-fi horror Man of Medan has had its release date leaked online. Man of Medan will reportedly launch on August 30th.

Apart of The Dark Pictures Anthology, a line of standalone horror titles, Man of Medan takes players out to the deep South Pacific ocean aboard a supernatural ghost-ship. Players embark on what has been described as a cinematic delight that is packed with twists and turns that not only keep your attention heightened, but force players to be at the edge of their seat.

An official release date for Man of Medan has not been announced yet but according to Twitter user Wario64, the title will be released on August 30th. This news has reportedly been sourced from Target through a pre-ordering purchase transaction, a screenshot has been provided above. Since this isn't an official announcement, I would still take this news with a grain of salt is it could certainly be subject to change.

Since the release of Mortal Kombat 11 on the PC, many users have spoken out about the framerate lock in some sequences being 30FPS. An option for this to be unlocked will soon be added.

The news comes from the official Mortal Kombat subreddit where WB_Will detailed the May Patch Notes 3. Included within this patch was numerous bug fixes such as; "Fixed an issue that could cause players to die twice in a row when failing a puzzle in the Krypt"Several minor mouse/keyboard input fixes" and "Fixed a major source of desyncs that would occur in Group Battles".

The patch notes also reveal the topic of framerate caps in certain areas. The notes say "we hear you" and that "We're currently working on providing the option to increase the caps in those areas to 60 FPS. We'll have more details soon, stay tuned!" This is great news for PC gamers and will mean mods like these will be useless as there will be an official option.

So far all of the games that are using the ReShade ray tracing shader mod by Pascal Gilcher look great, these games include Crysis recently and other ray tracing-style mods like SEUS powering Minecraft. But now one of the best examples of a ray tracing shader mod are here with Grand Theft Auto V.

GTA V is a great looking game with mods applied but with ray tracing shaders it looks out of this world -- the lighting effects are actually bloody impressive. At the 2:00 mark the reflections on the glass table and floor look absolutely incredible, but it is the 2:21 mark when the sunlight is hitting the green Lamborghini and as the sun passes over the cars it lights up the white Lambo next to it with the reflection of green light, with the effect looking super-realistic.

The developer explains his methods: "What I'm doing is ray tracing in screen space, tracing rays against the depth buffer (a data buffer that contains the information how far an object is away, as opposed to the color buffer which tells you what color the object has and what you usually see in any game). When compared to DXR, it has several limitations: anything behind another object does not contribute, anything outside the screen does not contribute, backfaces do not contribute. The benefits of this shader is that it can run on every game and GPU and it's a step up from regular SSAO. I hope this serves as a sneak peek at what DXR ray tracing can do and why everyone in VFX can't wait to get real ray tracing for their games".

NetEase will help Marvel develop new games for Chinese consumers, including mobile games aimed at tapping the $37.9 billion market.

Today Marvel announced a new partnership with NetEase to develop all-new projects based around the superhero brand. The duo will make "games, television series and comic books," the announcement says, which falls perfectly in line with Disney's preference to license games projects rather than making their own.

NetEase is a fantastic choice for Marvel's expansion into the massively lucrative region. The company is well-versed in the Chinese market and knows how to make tremendous revenues from monetized mobile games. According to Newzoo, NetEase raked in $6.2 billion in 2018 thanks to its heavy-hitting titles like Knives Out. Right now it's number #6 in the top 10 biggest games companies on the planet, beating out Nintendo and Electronic Arts.

This year's big Call of Duty game may have a free-to-play multiplayer component to help boost Activision's monetization earnings.

Activision is currently exploring free-to-play avenues for Infinity Ward's upcoming Call of Duty game, sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier. Whether or not Call of Duty 2019, which is believed to be Modern Warfare 4, will get a permanent free-to-play mode remains to be seen. The decision would depend on how much money a F2P mode could make, and whether or not it'd interfere with premium game sales.

Activision has only dabbled with F2P in its premium Call of Duty blockbusters. Black Ops 4's Blackout battle royale went F2P for a brief period of time, aligning with advice analyst Michael Pachter gave in 2018.

A new Steam sale coming under the title of 'Skulls for the Skull Throne' has taken over the Steam Store, bringing heavy discounts to many Warhammer titles.

Games Workshop has been conducting this same event for the past three years now and just like the previous years many gamers now have the opportunity to grab some great Warhammer titles at some even better prices. Focus Home Interactive and many other studios are taking part in the event. Discounts are ranging from 10% to 80% off and include both downloadable content for games and the initial games themselves.

Some of the titles that are discounted are; Total War: Warhammer 2 with 33% off, Man O' War: Corsair with 60% off, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 with 60% off and Warhammer: Inquistor at 50% off. There is many other titles on sale and numerous other DLC content that is also available at a discounted price. For more information you can visit the official Steam listing for the sale here.

Some new details have surfaced online regarding the coming free DLC for Celeste titled 'Farewell'. Celeste developers have taken to Twitter to release some small bits of information.

Matt Thorson has taken to his personal Twitter to announce that the script for Celeste's Chapter 9 DLC is almost finished. Thorson also mentions that him and his fellow developers were originally not planning on involving a story within this DLC, but plans changed and a story is now included.

Not only did Thorson comment on the development of the game, but Lena Raine, the composer for the game also gave some information regarding the DLC's soundtrack. Raine said; "Similarly, I was only planning on writing like ... 4 tracks max for the DLC. And then I ended up writing a lot more". The 9th Chapter will be arriving on all platforms completely free, at the moment there is no known release date planned.

Jack Tretton led Sony's PlayStation business for 8 years and spent two generations competing against Microsoft. Sony is winning this gen, but next-gen gives Microsoft's multi-faceted business strategy an opportunity to shine.

Sony's PlayStation 4 has absolutely annihilated Microsoft's Xbox One console insofar as sales. Right now the PS4 is up to 98.6 million and the Xbox One is believed to sit at 41 million (Microsoft stopped giving out sales figures years ago). To stay competitive, Microsoft was forced to get creative, and get creative it did: the company fused together Windows PCs and consoles, using Xbox LIVE and its huge array of billion-dollar services to hold it together. New additions like backwards compatibility one-upped Sony's noted lack of native legacy game play. Armed with new initiatives like Game Pass, Mixer, and Project xCloud, the Xbox brand is a strong $8 billion business that taps services, game sales, and engagement instead of raw hardware numbers.

Thanks to Microsoft's innovation, Jack Tretton sees the company as a major force to be reckoned with when next-gen rolls around in 2020. Microsoft isn't the same company it was in 2013. It's grown into something bigger, smarter, and laser-focused on the long game. In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Tretton said Microsoft could give Sony a run for their money with the next generation of console hardware.

As more big names move towards game streaming services, Nintendo is uniquely positioned to carve out a respectable niche in the market.

Here at TweakTown I've long said Nintendo should make its own on-demand streaming service. The subscription would fold directly into Switch Online and allow gamers to stream, rent, and even download specific games for play on the Switch. When the "Game Pass is coming to Switch" rumors circulated I was extremely skeptical: why would Nintendo let that happen when they could make their own Game Pass-like service? According to industry figure Dave Gibson, that's exactly what Nintendo wants to do.

Gibson says Nintendo may use Microsoft's Azure servers to power their Switch game streaming subscription. Sony recently partnered up with Microsoft to bring its own PlayStation Now service to Azure, and Nintendo could do the same. Nintendo could eventually beam popular Switch games like Animal Crossing, Zelda, Mario, and Super Smash Bros. wirelessly to gamers around the globe.

Minecraft is coming to the real-world with a new AR mobile game that chases Pokemon GO's huge earnings.

On Minecraft's 10 year anniversary, Mojang announced Minecraft Earth, an ambitious new ARG that turns everyday environments into voxel playgrounds. Users can build creations in a secret AR layer on our world, making it a kind of pocket within our reality for dazzling constructions and interactive adventures. Survival will also be a big part of the game and players will take on infamous baddies like creepers and more as they trek across the pixellated wilderness.

Minecraft Earth is built on four main principles that involve social engagement in the AR and real-world space: create, collect, collaborate, and explore.

A new Evil Dead game is on the way, and it sounds like something bigger than another mobile game. But there might be catch: the Ash Williams we know and love might be a bit different.

Bruce Campbell has been talking up a new Evil Dead game for a while now. First he commented about it in August 2018, saying it'll be an "immersive kind of dealio." Then in January 2019 he reaffirmed the project was still happening.

Now in a recent interview with TV Insider on Campbell's role in hosting the new Ripley's Believe it or Not, the esteemed groovy actor talked a bit more about the game. Campbell is set to voice Ash in the project, but the titular hero might've changed a bit from the boomstick-wielding badass we remember.

Epic's new PC game mega sale should've been a huge opportunity for excitement, savings, and most importantly, game sales. But there's just one problem: not every dev and publisher wanted to participate.

Epic's recent mega sale forcibly discounted every game on the storefront over $15. If a game costs more then $15, that game automatically had a $10 discount applied to it on top of the sale price set by the publisher. This offered some nice savings on big games like Borderlands 3, dropping all pre-orders by a cool $10. Not everyone was happy about this, namely the publishers that signed exclusivity deals with the promise of more revenues. Rather than letting devs and publishers opt out of the store-wide price drops, Epic offered a blanket discount on top of the sale price.

As a result, publishers literally started yanking their games from the storefront to avoid the sale. The Epic Store is in such a ramshackle state that entire games have to be pulled from the store if the publisher doesn't agree with the sale price. Some of the store's biggest exclusive games have been pulled including Borderlands 3 and The Division 2.

There are a few stories in my career writing for TweakTown (which is getting close to 19,000 stories now) where I sit back and say "what in the fresh hell is this?" and today, is another one of those days.

Wanking Simulator is on Steam right now, a new game where you play (I'm guessing serial masturbator) Winston Gay in a fictional town called Gay Bay. What do you do in a game called Wanking Simulator without it being banned instantly? Well, you cause as much chaos as you can.

Yes, you'll have to destroy most of the neighborhood of Gay Bay before masturbating to collect points. In the end, you'll get caught by police and your hands-on time (with yourself) ends. The developer teases: "Blow up cars (fun) or be a civilized man whose goal is to quietly wank (boring)".

As Activision pivots away from new IPs and games towards safer bets like sequels, the company now reportedly disrupts Call of Duty's rotating development cycle in favor of more guaranteed payoffs.

Next year's Call of Duty will be Black Ops 5, sources tell Kotaku, and will be developed by a trio of studios instead of just one. Treyarch is set to handle gunplay and multiplayer whereas Sledgehammer Games and Raven will craft the campaign portion. Before now, development of Call of Duty games rotated among three studios. Every year Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games took turns making titles in the billion-dollar franchise. Following the departure of studio leads Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey ,Sledgehammer has now been relegated to a support team.

This could mean Treyarch and Infinity Ward will be the only teams to have creative control over mainline Call of Duty games going forward. This falls in line with Activision's recent focus on aggressively pursuing wholly-owned IP with new investments, games engines, and sequels. Changing up the rotation could also mean Call of Duty won't be an annualized franchise any more, putting more reliance on the company's other branches King and Blizzard to pick up the slack in between FPS releases.